Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was a Roman patrician, consul and dictator of the early republic period. He left his legacy on the western world when, in 458 B.C., he was appointed to the role of dictator in the republic. Rome, with its early armies shattered by the Aequi people, handed him complete power over the republic. With this power, he rallied the Roman people and defeated the Aequi. Fifteen days after he was given unilateral power over the state, he gave it back to the people and returned to his farm. In 439 B.C., he was again given the power of dictator, in order to defend the state against a coup led by a patrician who sought to use his wealth to usurp the republic. After 21 days, Cincinnatus once again returned to his fields, his job done and the republic once again saved.
George Washington was born in the colony of Virginia in 1732. Washington supervised Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia. In 1761, Washington inherited the plantation of Mount Vernon. It would be remiss of me, in making this comparison, to fail to mention the ownership of slaves by Washington, and likely both men, though it is an ancillary observation. In 1775, Washington assumed the role of commander in chief of the continental army. Declining a salary, he led the American revolution from the frontlines until he bid farewell to his men and the Continental Congress in 1783. In his first farewell address, he declare dhis leadership to be, “this last solemn act of my official life.” In 1789, he became the first and only man to be elected to the office of the presidency both unanimously and reluctantly. Congress refused his request that he not be bequeathed with a salary. After his second and even more reluctant term, Washington delivered a speech held as the greatest in the American political tradition.
“The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations,” Washington in part. “You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils, and joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings and successes.”
“The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government,” he continues later in the speech. “But the constitution which at any time exists, till changes by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.”
After this speech, Washington returned home, establishing the tradition of two terms being the maximum a president should serve. This tradition would hold strong until Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to the presidency four times, believing that the national crises facing the government warranted running for more than two terms. After Roosevelt, Congress ratified the 22nd amendment to the Constitution, which states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
The reason I offer such an extended series of historical background is to properly emphasize the tradition of American democracy as sprung from Enlightenment era liberalism and the Roman ideals before it.
This past weekend, President Donald Trump, currently serving his second term in office, addressed the possibility of serving a third term, despite the Constitutional prohibition.
“I’m not joking,” Trump said. “There are methods which you could do it.”
The examples I have provided and tradition I have hopefully made clear should illustrate that there are no methods with which to do it, and even making the proposition in any manner is un-American and dictatorial.
The plain text and intent of the 22nd amendment is clear. It says no person may be elected more than twice. This amendment was written and ratified in the spirit of Washington, the founding father of the nation who, upon leading the armies of the new American republic, hung his metaphorical toga and returned to his farm, the American Cincinnatus. There is no American argument to be made for a president to serve more than two terms.
There is an argument, made by some, that a sufficient crisis could make a third term for a modern president sensible. They will frequently speak to the idea that America requires an “American Caesar.” The most widely known of these groups is the “Claremont Institute” — a think-tank which holds considerable sway among the Republican party. Claremont has platformed individuals such as, for example, Jack Posobiec, a right-wing speaker who has very publicly praised and marched with neo-Nazi groups, and who is currently a speaker and contributing writer for Turning Point USA and its very separate subsidiary Turning Point Action. It is a collection of highly anti-American authors and speakers who stand against American ideals, the American democratic project and its Constitution.
Discussing, let alone taking seriously the arguments in favor of a third term for any president, is a disgrace to the American project of democracy. There is no justification for it; there is no argument for it which is not purely advocacy for the degradation of the American ideal. The man who oversaw an attempt to halt the counting of electors and disrupt the democratic process once now says there is no jest in his consideration of a third term? It does not matter how far away the next presidential election is; it does not matter if it is impractical. The mere consideration of it is a demonstration that Trump does not want to relinquish his power as the head of the executive branch. The fact that elements of the right advocate for an “American Caesar” is an additional fuel to the fire of a man who could not live to half the ideals of the founding fathers, let alone Cincinnatus, let alone Caesar. Let no one forget how Caesar ended up, as a lesson in the consequences of dictatorship.
Libertas is the Roman goddess who gave us the word “liberty.” She was created socially along with the establishment of the Roman Republic in the overthrow of the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus. Her form inspired the body of the Statue of Liberty and the form of the lady Columbia who stands watch atop the United States Congress. When Julius Caesar overthrew the Republic, the Roman Senate voted in favor of the construction of a temple in her honor, to recognize Julius Caesar. It was never completed.
An American Caesar, who disgraces the founding fathers and the memory of Washington by discussing in serious tones the holding of a third office, who attempts and has attempted to destroy the process of democracy in pursuit of holding power, will be no savior. He will be no Caesar. He will not carry the momentum of the republic and its institutions into an empire. Liberty, Columbia and Libertas will watch as a Tarquinius seizes power and takes the fruits of democracy and liberalism from atop a gilded throne, with contempt for the people and institutions who built the house he rests in.
“Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions,” wrote Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman statesman who opposed Caesar’s dictatorship. “Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the ‘new, wonderful good society’ which shall now be Rome, interpreted to mean, ‘more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.”
The American Dream, this institution of faith, belief, the torch of Lady Libertas on the shore is a dream only enabled and empowered by Libertas. It is a dream which has been slowly expanded to more people.This dream is hated by those who would support an American Caesar. It is no coincidence that those who speak in favor of a third Trump term are frequently in favor of the repeal of several amendments to the Constitution which gave more people the ability to seize this dream.
Why are so many in favor of a third term for their Caesar, critical of the 14th amendment, which ensures the birthright citizenship of all born in the arms of Lady Liberty?
Why are so many who write in favor of the abolition of the traditions of Washington and Cinncinatus in favor of the repeal of the 15th amendment, which ensures that the right to a voice in the first modern democracy shall not be held on the basis of race, color, or previous freedom?
Why do so many of the authors and speakers who speak of Caesar, who speak of empire, oppose the 19th amendment, which guaranttes that the right to the dream not be infringed on the basis of sex?
It is because the men in favor of a third Trump term, who write and speak of a need for an “American revival” and an “American Caesar,” do not believe in democracy. It is that simple.
The American Dream. Libertas. Washington, Cincinnatus, the Republic. To speak of a third term for a president is as un-American as advocating for American monarchy.
In his 1935 poem “Let America Be America Again,” Langston Hughes wrote:
“Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)”
